Review: LEGO 21273 The Ghast Balloon Village Attack (A Minecraft Movie)
0
LEGO and Minecraft have proved to be a match made in heaven ever since those first Micro World sets landed in 2012 (recently celebrated in 2024 with the excellent 21265 The Crafting Table), marrying the two blocky properties perfectly with sets that have grown in diversity and creativity at the same pace as the game itself.
And with Minecraft about to make its big foray into the world of cinema with a feature film that’s causing mayhem in cinemas, it’s only fitting that the LEGO Minecraft theme should tackle some (hopefully) iconic scenes from A Minecraft Movie. Better yet, since A Minecraft Movie stars some substantial Hollywood talent it’s resulted in a host of minifigure debuts, in particular a minifig version of Jack Black’s role as Steve, which is essentially just Jack Black in a blue shirt. Fantastic.
So far, we’ve got two sets based on A Minecraft Movie, both launched on 1 March 2025. You can read my review of 21272 Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring, but below let’s take a look at 21273 The Ghast Balloon Village Attack, the biggest A Minecraft Movie set.
Special thanks to LEGO for sending this set over for review. If you’re planning on purchasing or pre-ordering this set, please consider using the affiliate links in this post. I may earn a small commission with each purchase that helps support the work I do on the blog!
21273 Ghast Balloon Village Attack Set Details
21273 Ghast Balloon Village Attack Set Details
21273
The Ghast Balloon Village Attack
6 (Steve, Natalie, Dawn, Piglin x2, Villager)
555
US$69.99 / AU$109.99 / £69.99 / €69.99 / CAD$89.99
1 March 2025
21273 Ghast Balloon Village Attack Minifigures
These new A Minecraft Movie sets aren’t just a big deal because they’re the first to be based on the live-action take on Minecraft, but because they feature minifigures based on celebrity roles in the film. The Ghast Balloon Village Attack comes with three of these, based on Steve (Jack Black), Dawn (Danielle Brooks) and Natalie (Emma Myers), along with two Piglins and a Villager for a total of six minifigures.
To repeat verbatim what I reported in the Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring review, Steve is naturally the most exciting of these, given he’s portrayed in the film by Jack Black and with very minimal work done by the film’s wardrobe/costuming department to give the impression that it’s not just Jack Black roaming around the world of Minecraft. While that might seem a bit half-baked, it’s resulted in some very amusing toy lines, including this one. Because what we have here is, arguably, just a LEGO Jack Black:
The Jack Steve minifig is pretty straightforward, with only the body and head elements being unique, though both capture the character quite nicely. Steve’s face can either feature a very recognisable smirk or a menacing scowl, and his blue top wouldn’t look right without the faint outline of an iconic belly. This is the only minifigure repeat across the two current A Minecraft Movie sets, but I’m sure it’ll be handy to some folks out there to have a second Jack Black on hand – anyone working on a School of Rock build?
The minifig version of Dawn (Danielle Brooks) is… not bad, but it could definitely be better. Her orange, purple and white jumpsuit has become mostly orange with some printed detail on the torso and oddly pale sleeves, and the hair mould chosen is pretty dissimilar from the style she wears in the film – in fact the piece used for Henry’s hair in the other A Minecraft Movie set looks much closer.
Looking into where this piece has been used before shows it’s mostly appeared on Shuri minifigures in Marvel sets and it’s part of the pure-black minifig in the Everyone is Awesome set. I don’t want to suggest the designers for this set at LEGO have just picked the nearest hair mould used for other LEGO representations of black women, but it gives a bad impression. Getting the hair right would’ve also made this a great stand-in for Brooks’s character in Orange is the New Black.
Natalie (Emma Myers) fares a bit better. The top part of her outfit in the film has been replicated well enough, though her patterned skirt has been replaced with some forest green legs. It’s another non-unique hair mould but at least this one looks close enough to what young fans will see in the Minecraft film.
Like the Zombie minifig used to represent the Chicken Jockey in the Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring set, the two included Piglins minifigures are essentially less-pixelated versions of the ones we’ve seen in previous Minecraft sets. The overall design and shape of the head mould is essentially the same, but completely boxy face and clothing details have been replaced with proper line art to more accurately mimic the pseudo-realistic film versions.
The same goes for the Villager, which uses the same unique head and body moulds but ups the resolution on the face and clothing detail. This has resulted in some particularly intense eyebrows:
21273 Ghast Balloon Village Attack Build
Based on what I again can only assume is a pivotal scene in the A Minecraft Movie film, the Ghast Balloon Village Attack set is spread across six bags with three distinct sections each accompanied by its own instruction booklet – making this a good set to build alongside younger Minecraft fans.
The first booklet and two bags assemble the front of Steve’s Lava Chicken, a chicken shop which can be seen in the trailers for A Minecraft Movie, along with a smaller food stand.
The shopfront is fairly straightforward as far as build techniques go, but it looks quite good once it’s together, with a roof constructed from dark red plates (I believe the 4×4 dark red corner piece is a new recolour, too) and some new printed plates for the signs on the two front walls. The movie version had some redstone levers and a gaggle of chicks living underneath the roof gable end, which could’ve been neat extra embellishments, but you do get one tiny chicken with it:
And then a real big chicken, which sits on the top of the building to let villagers for miles know that – yes – they can get a hot and fresh, lava-roasted chicken here.
The shop’s huge chicken mascot is a blocky construction hiding a fun secret. By pulling on the chicken’s wattle (I had to Google what that was called), you’ll release the egg stored up top and watch it fall through the front of the shop, which is a feature I didn’t see coming even as I was building the chicken. That should make it a fun surprise for kids putting this together, unless they’re smarter than I am, which is quite likely.
The next section of the build covers a room that we’ve seen as early as the first proper A Minecraft Movie trailers, giving us a simple version of Steve’s workshop, where he keeps his Crafting Table and introduces his new human friends to the joy of crafting in the Minecraft world.
Like the chicken shop, it’s not blessed with the full detail of the movie version, but it’s decent enough with some nice-looking torch sconces on the front and the same, small LEGO Crafting Table we’ve seen in other Minecraft sets. There’s also a second food stand here, for good measure.
But this segment goes beyond just a building, and gives us our first fearsome creature of the set – an Iron Golem. Luckily, this guy’s on our side. Using the same head mould as the Villager but in a grey colourway and obviously with a different print, plus a great-looking printed plate for its front torso, the Iron Golem is quite the attractive figure once built. I particularly like the multiple tones used on the limbs, something that’s not necessarily a feature of the cinematic version of the Iron Golem but is an effective-looking bit of creative license.
Along with the Iron Golem we also get a small, brick-built fountain that comes complete with an explosive interactive feature, using a Technic beam as a simple lever to pop the top off. I don’t really have a lot of context for this as a movie moment, but I’m sure it’s something kids will be able to point to in April at the cinema and say “Hey, my LEGO Minecraft fountain does that!”
For the third and final stretch of this build, it’s finally time to build the namesake Ghast Balloon, which is the key model in the set and gets its own instruction booklet and pair of bags (well, sort of, it shares them with the two Piglin minifigures).
The idea of a Ghast Balloon piloted by Piglins – Ghasts in Minecraft are boxy, jellyfish-like creatures that somewhat resemble ghosts – might seem like it’s exclusive to A Minecraft Movie, but a bit of sleuthing actually turned up at least one instance of a player modding this idea into the Minecraft game over a year ago. People have been finding ways to use Ghasts as balloons for years, of course, but the coincidental nature of having two Piglin pilots was interesting to me.
Anyway, the LEGO take on the Ghast Balloon is very cool. At first, I thought that the middle section of the otherwise-hollow centre was for added support, but it turns out it actually hides a clever little interactive action. Once built, one of the two included round, printed tiles can be inserted into the Ghast’s mouth and fired at impressive speeds by pressing in a cross axle piece at the back (thank goodness it comes with two of these pieces because I almost immediately lost the one I first tested this with).
That makes this version of the Ghast pretty similar to the one that featured in 21255 The Nether Portal Ambush, albeit with a slightly different colour scheme in the “face” and longer legs. Plus, this one’s a hot air balloon so it’s also attached to a platform complete with a couple of seats for your Piglins to rest on. There’s a support attaching the platform to the Ghast and holding it all up, of course, but once the chains are in place the effect of it “floating” is achieved fairly well.
Final Thoughts
Once it’s all built and displayed together, it’s actually quite impressive how rich and diverse this set is for something just north of 550 pieces. Unfortunately it’s also priced quite high for that piece count, which can only guess is owing to the number of minifigures included. But for younger builders who’re into Minecraft and keen on the film, the added action elements and representations of A Minecraft Movie scenes/moments should make this a winner – plus it’s a whole lot more colourful than the other tie-in set, Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring.
Final Score
Audience rating
Thanks for reading! 21273 The Ghast Balloon Village Attack is available from LEGO.com, Amazon.com, or most toy retailers.
To get the latest LEGO news and LEGO Reviews straight in your inbox, subscribe via email, or you can also follow on Google News, or socials on Facebook, Instagram (@jayong28), Bluesky or subscribe to the Jay’s Brick Blog Youtube channel.
